imaginary music blog

So while we mentioned this album earlier as an “upcoming release” we failed miserably to actually announce the final release of the album, such as it was. With that in mind: we are delighted to inform/warn you that this album has been released.

We’ve worked with Chicago independent upstart Minor Sphere Records to bring The Golden Breed EP to some of the finest (if not less than marginally relevant) online retailers including iTunes and Amazon. If you’d like to listen to it without committing to buying you can check out the whole damn thing in Soundcloud below. Of course, you could continue to avoid the entire enterprise entirely and be none the worse off for it, but if so at least take a look at our wonderful custom shoes.

As mentioned previously, this is our foray into “surf ambient;” a nascent genre we are hoping to create, exploit, flog mercilessly, and eventually regret coining.

These tracks were recorded over the course of a year, each one a fully improvised solo guitar performance, and in each case were played exactly once – after which they were transferred from the cheap handheld recording device on which they were captured into the Reason DAW and then (basically unprocessed) into their final WAV form.

Through these tracks we explore the context and subtext of the idea of ambient vs. surfing: improvisation, responding to moving and ever-shifting waves, staying in the correct space but working within defined parameters for maximum effect, being propelled but also in command of the forward momentum – all true in both surfing and the improvisational sessions during which these tracks were performed. Plus we played a Fender Jaguar.

This is added to our historical and current love and reverence for the “California Lifestyle” (expressed most beautifully in the iconography of mythic Sixties Surf culture) and the mental state of mind (whether imagined or actually lived) of both these idealized surfing gods and our current reality: laid back, darkly bright, natural artifice, sun-baked and salt-encrusted, beauty and truth (both real and put-on), with a healthy dose of fuck-ups.

We like to think that this music captures some of these ideas, at least enough to forgive us the categorization. If you’re still reading at this point, please give a listen below and see just how far off base we might be. Thanks.
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